Inglorious Basterds

An Illusion Review by Joan Ellis

It is violent, brutal, and sadistic. It is also riveting and brilliant. It is
Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds,” and it will leave you breathless. He
has created a revenge fantasy for everyone who still wonders, 68 years after the
Nazis occupied Paris, if something couldn’t have been done to stop the madman
who came so close to destroying the western world.

Tarantino’s
mind is a storm tossed sky of ideas and contradictions. His intentions are
serious, but still you will laugh. On the very edge of catastrophe, doomed
characters discuss the history of German cinema. A deadly character suddenly
morphs into20a cartoon of himself. Eccentric touches abound: a Sherlock Holmes
pipe for “The Jew Hunter” who is, after all, a detective too; a Cinderella
slipper with a ghastly symbolism. But look at what Tarantino has done to bring
order to his eternal cerebral chaos.

He presents
his ideas in five chapters that become a tightly controlled structure where he
can rumble randomly through his thoughts. In Chapter One we meet Col. Hans Landa
(Christoph Waltz) the S.S. officer in charge of rounding up Jews who remain at
large in France. In a superbly crafted opening scene, a purposeful Landa comes
to the farm of Mr. La Padite (Denis Menochet) to interrogate him about rumors of
Jewish families being hidden in the countryside. By the time this agonizing
scene is over, we understand that Col. Landa never starts an interrogation
without knowing all the answers in advance. This allows him to indulge himself
with wordplay in several languages as he toys with the victims he has already
targeted. For him, it is the ultimate game. He is a stew of sophistication and
brutality. He is a silken savage.

Chapter Two
gives us Tennessee mountain man Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt,) a beast of a man whose
assignment with his small band of eight Jewish soldiers is to kill Nazis. He is
a rural version of Col. Landa, and easily his match in brains and sadism.
Reaching for his Apache heritage, Raine orders his small band to scalp every
victim, and this they do in graphic slow motion. The revenge has begun.

In Chapters
Three and Four we meet German actress and double agent Bridget von Hammersmark
(Diane Kruger) and theater owner Shoshanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent). Both will
become primary figures in the cataclysmic last chapter, and both are perfectly
cast. Characters and plot lines will converge in Chapter Five.

Violence is a
Tarantino specialty, and whenever he uses it, you can be sure it will be
prolonged and exaggerated. Lest we miss his po ints, he delivers them in scenes
of blazing color. But remember, this is a fantasy, and the violence is a
horrific reminder that the reality was worse.

We have been
well prepared for the explosion of the ferocious terminal vengeance by watching
the intricate preparations. This is Quentin Tarantino’s own Final Solution. It
is his personal alternative ending to World War II.